This blog is mainly about the spectacular train wreck at The Sacramento Bee and its parent company, the McClatchy Company. But I also post about current events, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, politics, anything else that grabs my attention. Take a look around this blog, hope you enjoy it.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Robotic publisher tells glazed employees everything is fine (updated)

Check out this video of Miami Herald publisher David Landsberg. The video is part of an ad campaign to reassure subscribers and advertisers that the Miami Herald is healthy and relevant.

Landsberg is earnest yet robotic. You get the idea Landsberg thinks if he over-pronounces every syllable, the dense people gathered around the table will understand what he is saying.

UPDATE: My initial post had an incorrect first name for the Miami Herald publisher, sorry. And, FYI, I have it on good authority the Miami Herald publisher is no relation to the publisher of this excellent site.

27 comments:

I am certainly comforted. Everything must be just dandy since they assign the person who presided over the most massive loss of subscriptions in the shortest amount of time in journalism's entire history to send my reassurance.

Please, could I have another serving of Cuban Communist Propaganda please. I just can't get enough.

Dave Landsberg is a terrific guy and a big reason you don't see The Miami Herald getting slammed on this site the way you see KC Star, SacBee and Raleigh, to name just a few.

To give you some Circulation 101, in case you care to be educated instead of lobbing out ignorant BS, the majority of those lost copies were deliberately cut in areas that did not add value to advertisers and were really expensive to circulate. Duh -- ever heard of 3rd-party circulation? What actually happened were some strategic moves it was acknowledged beforehand would hurt the numbers but were wise long-term decisions. The Herald also cut out doing contest giveaways, the kind of promotion that gives you a temporary spike in copies when people buy a paper to get the entry form (and throw the rest of the paper in the trash).

When The Miami Herald comes out of this downturn -- which it will, but smaller much different -- it will be in large part because of Dave Landsberg.

As for the stupid ignorant comments about being pro-Castro, they are obviously posted by someone in the earthquake zone who has never been to Miami and knows zero about it but inflates his ego by making idiotic statements. Liberal as The Herald we may be, we too revile the Cuba regime and can't wait for it to change so we can start going fishing down there again.

The Miami Herald has lost all credibility. I don’t think anyone will take their news seriously ever again. Being too liberal has its price, now pay the piper. What about all that propaganda from Castro last week? Why was that pulled down in such a hurry? Not to be trusted! Landsberg is on autopilot, and the MH is headed into the Bermuda Triangle.

Yes, 10:02, I read all the horseshit about the web content. It was dumb not to keep a better eye on something being posted by a Cuban-American community group with whom we have posting partnership but it expired quickly and FYI we got not one complaint from readers about it. Except for all the overgrown hoopla on the blogs. Get over it - STUPID - there is no conspiracy with Castro etc. We'd ove to see his ass get kicked out, too.

Sound familiar? Oh well, uh, bu,but, It's not our fault. Someone else did it. We're not responsible. We just partnered with these F(*Kers and had no idea what they were building on our property. We're really on the side of good, we just didn't pay one lick of attention for several weeks to what we were publishing.

Tell me another one.

Now I am curious since you seem to know so much. How much were they paying to post this propaganda? If you say you allowed it for free, I will believe you.

Again I have to say that commenters who think The Miami Herald is pro-Castro obviously don't know anything about Miami or the demographics here. Easily half of Herald employees are Cubans whose families left Cuba as exiles, including dozens of managers and some senior executives. Like the head of our local interactive group, go figure!! Being pro-Castro with that group of employees would be like telling your mother-in-law she's fat and expecting your wife to smile and hug you. And you obviously haven't read any of the hundreds of editorials over the years criticizing the Castro regime. No, you prefer wild assumptions to demonstrated long-time proof.

"Being pro-Castro with that group"==That is like saying the 'Hurl' is not liberal. Why, no one would go along with tainting the news! The employees would never, never allow a liberal slant. In-the-tankism is alive and well in Miami. What about the Castro propaganda of last week? What Cuban/American employee allowed that? I'll bet that made them mad as hell. Write your crap like you know Miami, it is working so well for you.

The so-called propaganda last week was such a non-issue no one even knew about it. No one made a peep. But obviously nothing will convince you. Take your meds and wipe the foam off your mouth and go after somebody else.

Being pro-Castro with that group of employees would be like telling your mother-in-law she's fat and expecting your wife to smile and hug you.

--------------Look. You are defending the indefensible and worse, you are attempting to use the past to defend the present.

No matter what you say, The Miami Herald knowingly and willingly entered into an agreement to act as a conduit to feed Communist propaganda for the Cuban Communist Party. You're attempting to deny what was clearly going on for weeks. Do you realize just how stupid you come off attempting to tell people what you were doing did not happen?

The so-called propaganda last week was such a non-issue no one even knew about it.

----------------------Actually millions of people know about it. Maybe not your subscribers, but the rest of the country, the FBI, the CIA and the DNC are all well aware.

For what it is worth, we at the DNC congratulate you. Bonus for all. Now, scatter like the cocka roaches before the others catch up to you. Let us know when you get back to the motherland. Use the safe word Comrades.

“The so-called propaganda last week was such a non-issue no one even knew about it.”

So why the fast pull down? [so-called propaganda] No one objected. Right? No one knew about it? WRONG! You can’t even tell the truth about it now. You must think the three remaining readers you have are blind. MNI would sell the Herald in a minute if they could, NO ONE WANTS IT!

“Want to know what is going on in Cuba? Well, the Miami Herald is feeding its readers propaganda printouts from the Communist government's Cuban News Agency (ACN) and passing them off as legitimate news. What also makes this practice especially insidious is that the pages on which these stories appear makes it seem as if they are Associated Press stories (AP). Note the prominent capitalized "AP" in the URL of the Herald's most recent ACN story:”

Landsberg is a corporate yes-man and always has been. He is surrounded by irrelevant editors and low grade sales executives who tell him what he wants to hear and cover their butts. Good talent has come and gone from the Herald. After repeated downsizing on a last in, first out basis... what's left is the scum at the bottom of the barrel. (ie those who were too inept to get out of newspaper biz ten years ago and stayed for the benefits and "security").

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